APC Unboxing and First Impressions

Some members over at the LivePA.org boards have gotten their grubby littles hands on the new Akai APC40 for Ableton Live. Here is some great unboxing video and some comments.

Akai APC40 - Opening the box from Tom Cosm on Vimeo.

via LivePA.org


Wesley D. Quotes:

The clip launching is sweet. Very sweet. The lower bank of knobs is rather worthless to me. I'll be keeping the PX-7 as part of the rig for it's 16 awesome feeling knobs that have a beginning and end!!! I was really hoping I could use a single controller. Perhaps with some tweaking.... Here's the problem, the lower knobs want to control single devices. Right now for this to work I would need to instruct the knobs to ignore device 1, and then have discreet knobs routed to just a few places on other devices. On my PX-7 I have a HPF and LPF on each channel. I grab the knob, I change the filter. Here I have to first select the track, then I have to scoot to the next device, then I only control that single device. It sucks, but after less than 5 minutes I already want to edit this thing. I don't want to assume control over individual devices. I want to choose my device routings and have them show up when I select that channel. This sucks kinda bad, it means I'll have to edit before I can mix with EQ or filters. I can only mix with volume out of the box. I suppose I could load an EQ as the first device in each channel, but I don't feel like it. I like the way I've had it set up.

I've also solved my device woes, EFFECTS RACKS FTW!!! Easily dedicate knobs to whatever device you like, and the 8 knobs correspond to the track you have selected. That's powerful as hell, makes it like those DJ mixers where you select a track and then go play with FX, only so much more.

As far as navigation, I think I could get used to this. The 'zoom out' thing when you press shift is pretty sweet. Very intuitive. You can sorta 'see' your set in blocks, then press the block you wanna go to. I very easily routed my 8th lower knob to control 'scroll'. So I can scan around to see, then use 'shift+pad' to jump to the box where I need it. I love how the matrix shows you where the clips are, I think you still need the monitor, but this helps you look at it less frequently. Having 40 pads to launch clips with is just plain sweet. No two ways about that.

There doesn't seem to be a way to control FX on the sends, but I don't care. I'm running the Remote Zero together with the APC40 right now for all my discrete nit picky routings.

The APC40 kicks serious ass at what it does. My first impression was pretty bad, but with a little time (less than an hour) I'm reworking my set to be way more powerful than it was yesterday.